Ashes and Dust
by StoneandSilence
Summary: "The old man always said time travel could contaminate the mind." After taking his siblings to the past and averting the apocalypse Five struggles with his mind and his memories. The future is safe...but at what cost? Five-centric. (Trigger warnings for themes of mental illness and mentions of attempted suicide.) Part 1 of the Chronos Saga
1. To the Victor, the Spoils

(song lyrics from "Synchronicity II" by the Police)

**6:30 am, Tuesday August 13th, 2019**

_"Another suburban family morning,"_ the alarm clock shrieks at him, thudding base riff and crashing drums slamming him into wakefulness. _"Grandmother screaming at the wall!"_

Klaus' hand fumbles for the off switch.

_"We have to shout above the din of our rice crispies. We can't hear anything at all!"_ He slams the button down, cutting off the angry, howling vocals and good god, who decided _that_ was an appropriate song to play at- he glances at the clock - 6:30 in the morning? That clinched it, radio DJ's were the fucking _worst_.

He sits up with a wince, glaring balefully at the clock and rubbing away the sandpaper grit in his eyes. He feels fuzzy, static-muffled and groggy. It reminds him of a hang-over, which is tragically unfair since he'd never gotten the enjoyment of being drunk first. Then again, when has life ever been fair to anyone in _this_ house?

Under different circumstances that thought might be funny in a gallows-humor sort of way. Right now it just makes him want to hit something.

Ah well. Sally forth, stiff upper lip and all that bullshit, right? He gets his feet under him, gropes around and finds a half-smoked cigarette in the disheveled tumble of blankets. Score. Must've fallen asleep smoking last night; probably a miracle he hadn't burned the house down. He sticks it in the corner of his mouth and fumbles around for a lighter, inhaling tobacco and nicotine, jump-starting his brain. He gives his shirt a contemplative sniff, trades it out for a marginally cleaner one. He stretches out the worst of the kinks in his back and stumbles his way downstairs.

Breakfast, his brain reminds him. The first thing he needs to do is make some breakfast.

He gets to the kitchen, tiles cold under his bare feet and Vanya's there, looking small and sad behind her notebook, the one with the endless notes scribbled all over in her sharp, spidery handwriting.

"Hey," he says, trying to give her a reassuring smile.

"Hey," she replies, corner of her mouth twitching up. No happiness in her eyes though. Small wonder. This whole fucking house was a monument to tragedy.

"Rough night?" he asks, already knowing the answer.

"It wasn't so bad," she lies.

Klaus doesn't have anything positive to say to that so he squeezes her shoulder instead and starts making some pancakes. Pancakes, eggs...soft foods, he remembers. For some reason soft foods were better. Klaus doesn't know why that is but he also doesn't question it. When you found something that worked, you went with it.

She watches him as he mixes up some instant batter. Klaus was a 'just add water' kind of cook. "I didn't think it was your day," she ventures.

"It's not," he replies, not looking at her because he doesn't want to see the sadness in her eyes. The _guilt_. He just- can't deal with it right now. Too early in the morning, and there are other things he has to deal with first. Like breakfast. "I swapped with Diego. He and Allison are meeting with a doctor."

"Another one?"

Klaus shrugs, "Have to try, right?"

Her voice goes funny. "Doctor's can't help if they don't know what's wrong," and God, isn't that the truth. Klaus knows it all too fucking well.

"Yeah..." he says, and then stops, leaning against the counter with the whisk clutched weakly in his hand.

"I'm sorry," she says immediately, "I didn't mean-"

"I know, it's okay."

"No it isn't," she says, and he hears a sniff. Oh boy...he puts the bowl to one side and goes to her, wrapping his arms around her.

"Hey, com'on, it's all right," he says, even though it isn't and they both know it. He strokes the top of her head. "It's going to be okay. We'll...we'll figure this out."

Not for the first time, she starts to cry. "I'm so sorry, Klaus," she whispers, the rest of the words lost in tears.

"It wasn't your fault," he says, though a part of him doesn't believe that. But that part of him doesn't matter. That part of him is only a tiny little piece and it can go fuck itself.

It's when the dishes start to rattle in the cupboard he realizes they might have a problem. "Hey, hey sis. Calm down, okay? No need to-" he almost says 'bring the house down' but realizes what a bad turn of phrase it would be. "-rattle the windows."

She calms, taking a series of small, shaky breaths that slowly lengthen until she's breathing normally again and the plates stop clinking together. "Medication would be easier," she mumbles, her face still pressed against his shirt.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Klaus answers, and Vanya surprises them both by laughing a bit, swiping at her eyes.

"Sorry," she mumbles again, stepping away. "Didn't mean to keep you from breakfast."

"It's cool. I'm here for you too, you know."

"Thank you," she says, words heartfelt and sincere enough it makes him feel guilty for all times he wasn't. Not that he didn't feel guilty about that already, for a lot of reasons. But there's nothing more to say (or maybe there's too much to say) so he goes back to cooking.

"You want some?" he asks, loading up a plate. Paper, just in case. They'd had some bad experiences lately with ceramic.

"No, but...do you want me to come with you?" Klaus shakes his head.

"You had the night shift," he reminds her, reaching and out and folding her into a one armed hug, other hand holding the plate. "Go home and get some rest, okay? We'll call you if we need anything."

"Okay," she says, not arguing the point, looking small and tired and crushed down by life. Well, weren't they all?

He sighs and takes the stairs, feeling like a character in one of those Victorian novellas on his way to visit the crazy relative locked in the attic that no one ever talked about. He should get a candelabra to carry around; lend an air of dignity to the affair. Maybe a flowing white gown to trail dramatically behind him or something...

He knocks on the door out of habit even though he doubts he'll get a response. "Wakey, wakey!" he sing-songs, voice full of forced cheer. Well why not? He was Klaus; he's had years of experience pretending to be cheerful. No reason to stop now. The door doesn't say anything so he shoulders it open with a smile plastered on his face.

Five is sitting on his bed, bit of chalk clutched in one hand, walls decorated in their usual array of indecipherable symbols and equations that always made Klaus think of the inside of a pharaoh's tomb (appropriate, that). They'd gotten him a blackboard but for some reason he still preferred to write on the walls. At least chalk wiped off. He'd gotten ahold of a marker a few weeks back and Luther had to paint over the whole room.

"Hey buddy," Klaus says and gets ignored for his effort, "Didn't give Vanya too hard a time last night, did you? I bought you some breakfast."

Five doesn't look up, doesn't acknowledge him at all, contemplating the chalk like it held the answers to every mystery in the universe. Or maybe just the ones in his head. Klaus keeps talking because one-sided as the conversation might be, silence was worse. "Not too hungry this morning huh? That's cool. I'll just set it down here, okay?" He waits a beat, secretly begging Five to say something - anything. Who'd have dreamed there would come a day when Klaus actually missed getting bitched at by his brother?

"So," he starts again, "I know Diego usually does fetch and carry on Tuesdays but he's checking into some things with Allison, so you're stuck with me."

Nothing. Nothing but goddamn radio silence. Like yesterday and the day before and the day before that...as far as Klaus knows, it's been almost a week since Five has spoken to any of them. Mind, words weren't the problem; he'd speak all right. To himself, to people who weren't there, to Dolores. But to his brothers and sisters? Last time he'd spoken to Klaus was Friday and that was to ask him who he was. "Right. Look I really don't want to like, force feed you again so if you could just- give me a sign that you're still in there somewhere that would be great."

Five looks up and Klaus' heart stutters but the hope is short lived. Five isn't looking at him, he's staring at the wall, those scribbled-over equations that had never made any sense to Klaus and that he's pretty sure don't make sense to anyone at all anymore.

"Nice artwork," Klaus says, following his gaze. "You um, you want me to get a washcloth, make some space? Looks like you've run out of room." His shoulders are starting to sag under the weight of the silence and he feels something inside him beginning to crack. "Com'on Five, say something. _Please_."

_"Early onset Alzheimer's,"_ the doctors had said, _"Atypical symptoms," "Never seen it in someone this young before," _and _"shouldn't be possible."_ The doctors - those fucking _pricks_ \- had done a tolerable job of hiding their excitement behind concerned frowns and carefully crafted bedside manners but Klaus could see right through that shit, and he could see they were practically vibrating at the thought of poking around Five's brain. A fourteen year old with dementia? They'd be able to write research papers for years.

Well fuck that. His brother wasn't a goddamn lab rat and anyway, their research was fucked because the premise was bullshit.

Five didn't have Alzheimer's.

What Five had was a bad case of getting his brain scrambled via time travel. He had pushed himself beyond his limit taking them all into the past and then back again, and the real bitch of it was they'd fucking _won_. They stopped the apocalypse and he'd gotten them all home safe, just like he promised he would. But he lost himself somewhere along the way.

This...this is what victory looked like in the Hargreeves household.

Klaus' vision goes soft around the edges and he sits down on the bed next to Five. That wasn't always a good idea - sometimes Five reacted badly to people getting too close to him - but Klaus hasn't seen Five react to much of anything for a couple days so he takes the chance. At least he was - as far as they knew - too addled to jump anymore. That had been a real bitch in the beginning; Five, his mind just starting to slip, teleporting all over the damn place and not always with the understanding of what he was doing or where he ended up. He'd sent them scrambling on some pretty epic scavenger hunts at first, like the world's most anxiety inducing game of hide and seek.

That's when the doctors had gotten involved, but how did you explain to a doctor that your brother was suffering from time traveler's disease?

They tried to stay positive, hoping Five would pull out of it but he didn't, getting more and more lost inside his own damaged head. And the worst thing, the absolute worst thing about it was that Five was smart enough to know what was happening to him. He'd been terrified, and there wasn't a damn thing any of them could do to help.

After the suicide attempt they didn't leave him alone anymore.

By unanimous agreement it was decided they would take it in shifts, everyone picking a 'day' to stay at the academy and watch over their swiftly fading brother. It was probably one of the only things they'd ever agreed on without fighting about. There was talk of hiring a nurse, but that idea was quickly shot down. A nurse wouldn't understand how to connect with what was left of Five, wouldn't know what to do if he suddenly blinked away to another part of the house.

They were family, and they'd deal with this as a family.


	2. Abomination

** 8:25pm, Monday April 1st, 2019**

There was of course the the distinct possibility they would all be torn to pieces at the atomic level. That the crackling blue energy which engulfed and protected him whenever he jumped through a wormhole would fail, leaving them at the mercy of a wrathful universe.

He saw no benefit in sharing this information with the others.

Therefore to say the worst thing that could happen was their adult consciousness being transposed into childhood bodies was perhaps one of his more impressive lies, but he sold it and they believed it, joining hands and putting their faith in him. Then again the alternative was incineration via moon rock, so.

He wouldn't know which was the lesser evil until he tried.

The shield itself had always been the easy part; instinctive, like drawing breath. Now he grimaced with the effort expended at making it large enough to encompass them all. He'd never done this before, wasn't even sure it could be done and he had about two minutes to make it work before they all died. No pressure. There was a tense moment before his power responded, a shimmering blue light raining down over them, that thin membrane of energy all that would separate his family from the raging oblivion on the other side.

Now for the hard part. He told them to hold on, that it would be 'messy'. This was another gross understatement; it was a great day for falsehoods.

At least he did not promise that everything would be all right. He was not that great a deceiver.

He took a deep breath, reached out with the awakened part of his mind and touched the fabric of the universe. He could feel the time-stream flowing all around him like water, quick rushing torrent of endless probabilities, incalculable number of choices and paths and alternate timelines spider-webbing out of each other in the great fractal pattern of TIME, forming the basic tapestry of reality. For all that, there was no chaos here. It was in fact the very opposite of chaos, every possibility mapped with mathematical precision. One could find any timeline, any choice and any variable down to a single blade of grass provided one had the proper equations to do so.

He'd spent a lifetime studying those equations and still barely understood them.

He thrust forward, grabbed a hold of the elemental threads and tightened his grip as they twisted and writhed like living things. He held on by metaphorical fingernails and began to pull, screaming with the effort of bending universal forces to his will. The universe didn't _like_ it when he did this; man wasn't supposed to be able to tear a hole in the fabric of space and time. Wormholes existed but they were organic, a natural aberration of the status quo. Five was unnatural; a thing that shouldn't exist but did. They all were, to varying degrees. He understood this better than his siblings. Not because he was smarter - though it was a fair cop - but because he could feel how creation protested being warped and twisted around him. The others were the same, to a lesser extent. Diego shouldn't be able to bend the laws of physics. Allison shouldn't be able to alter reality. But these were small Events, isolated anathema. Tiny flaws that could be overlooked in the grand woven tapestry of the universe. What Five could do held the potential to shift entire timelines, to unmake the tapestry completely.

Five was an abomination and the universe tried to kill him every time he jumped. The greater the leap, the harder it tried (one of the many reasons it was so exhausting). This was the biggest leap - and thus the biggest risk - he'd ever attempted.

Again, he kept this knowledge wholly to himself.

He pulled with all his strength, feeling his mind start to bend under the strain and then pulled harder because the moon was falling and his efforts would be for nothing if he could not get them away before impact. Finally the universe relented and tore apart in his hands with the electric smell of ozone, the walls of quantum reality separating beneath the relentless thrust of his will.

He gathered his siblings and pushed them through the fissure he'd created. They blinked away a fraction of a second before the theater was blown apart. But in this game, a fraction of a second was all he needed.

They hurtled through the primordial chaos of subspace, cradled womb-like in the protective bubble of Five's energy shield. All around him he could feel the universe's fury, the way it clawed and bit at his defenses, seeking to break them apart. It was taking all his effort to keep it at bay and steer them in anything approaching the right direction. Even so, he could feel his siblings starting to slip away from him, the shield that was their only protection against being ripped apart by the time continuum beginning to thin. He'd pushed himself to his limit, possibly beyond it.

"Hold on!" he screamed again, no idea if his voice could even be heard so he gripped their hands more tightly, his own shaking and slick with sweat. He couldn't lose them now, he'd come too far, gambled too much. He would not be the reason his siblings died. _I won't fail them again_, he thought, jaw clenched so hard his teeth nearly cracked.

It was going to be very close.


	3. All We Do Is Crumble

**8:43am, Tuesday August 13th, 2019**

It's Ben who alerts him to the trouble.

He appears in Luther's room limned in blue light, looking panicked and wild-eyed and Luther is instantly on point, muscles tensed for danger. Ben would never come to him like this unless something was terribly wrong.

Sadly, his instincts are dead-on (hah).

"It's Five! We nee-" Ben starts, vanishing before he could finish and Luther doesn't waste time pondering the rest of the message. There's two flights of stairs, eighteen steps and a couple hallways between his room and Five's bedroom in the attic. He makes it in about twenty seconds, which is ten seconds sooner than it takes Five to finish strangling their brother to death.

They're on the floor, Five's hands locked around Klaus' throat, the later's face already turning from scarlet to purple and thank god (thank _god)_ they had long ago removed anything that could be used as a weapon. No cords, no neckties, no hangers. The room was bare, strictly utilitarian. Even the food came with paper plates and plastic spoons these days. It probably wasn't helping his mental state but they hadn't had a choice.

Five had been trained to kill, and it seemed to be one of the few things he hadn't forgotten. In any case, they weren't going to risk another suicide attempt. It was sheer luck the first one had failed, and they wouldn't be that fortunate again.

If you could call this 'fortunate'.

"Five! Stop it!" Luther throws himself on top of them, grabbing Five's wrists and prying his hands from around Klaus' neck. Five fights him for every inch but when it comes to brute strength he's hopelessly outmatched. Luther pulls him back, massive arms locking around his thin frame, keeping him pinned. Klaus takes a deep, ragged breath that whistles at the end and falls into a violent retching, coughing fit. There are bruises on his neck the shape of fingerprints.

Five is still struggling in his grip but beginning to tire. Luther looks over at Klaus, worry creasing his face as his brother struggled not to vomit. "You okay?"

Klaus is too busy breathing to answer with words but gives him a weak thumbs up.

"Can you get mom?" he asks but Klaus is already dragging himself to his feet with a nod, silent understanding passing between them. Five growls like an animal and mutters something about mission directives. Luther sighs and tips his head against the wall, waiting for the last of the fight to go out of him. "Tell her to bring the Haldol. And...and the chloroform."

It's going to be one of _those_ days...

* * *

"I'm not sure that's going to help your throat," Luther says, nodding at the cigarette between Klaus' fingers. It's the kitchen again. They congregate here a lot these days and Luther isn't sure if that's because it's the furthest room from the attic or not.

Klaus takes a drag just to spite him and winces as it sends him into another coughing fit. " 's fine," he wheezes and Luther just sighs, sliding a mug of honey and lemon tea over to him. Klaus makes a face but drinks it anyway. "You know," he says, voice sounding like it's been scraped off the bottom of someone's shoe, "If you'd just been strangled by a pint-sized psycho, I'd let you smoke whatever you want."

"Don't call him that!" Luther snaps and Klaus' eyes go momentarily wide. Luther braces his hands against the table, breathes in and wrestles himself under control. The whole subject of accidentally violent siblings and how best to manage them was an admittedly sensitive topic, not least of all because this whole mess was at least partially his fault. "He's not a psycho," he says quietly.

"You're right, bad choice of words. Sorry."

"It's okay. I'm just..." he pauses, groping about for the words, but the only thing in his head is Five (what was left of him), bending over Klaus with dead-eyed focus, crushing the life out of him with his own two hands.

"Exhausted?" Klaus offers helpfully, cigarette smoke making circles in the air as he gestures. "Pissed off, hopeless and full of despair? Screaming to the sky about an uncaring universe and cursing whatever god brought it all into existence?" He takes another drag and slouches indolently in the chair like a bohemian king, but his eyes are studying Luther with piercing lucidity.

Sometimes Luther wonders when Klaus became so eloquent. Probably about the time he became sober. "Well, maybe not in so many words...but yeah."

Klaus makes a noise of agreement in the back of his throat, winces again as it stings.

Luther frowns at him. "You should see a doctor about that."

"Fuck doctors."

Fair enough. Luther shifts uncomfortably. "I should- someone should...you know." He gestures vaguely towards the attic.

"It's fine for now; mom pumped him up with enough anti-psychotics he'll sleep straight through till next week. Or you know, tomorrow."

They lapse into a melancholy silence that presses in on Luther, his eyes drawn again to the mottled, purple-red bruises rising on his brother's neck. _That's your fault too,_ his conscious reminds him. Klaus almost died. _Would_ have died, and Five- Five would never even know what he'd done. (Or worse, he would. Luther doesn't trust anything in this world anymore.)

"I'm sorry," he hears himself say, not for the first time. "This- this is all my fault."

Klaus just rolls his eyes at him. "Christ not you, too. You and Vanya should get together, start a club."

"If I hadn't-" he chokes on the words. Every time chokes on the words. "The night she came home, after Allison- I didn't-"

Klaus crushes out his cigarette on the table top and leans forward. His voice is ground down to a rasp but it's still forceful. "Climb down off the cross, Luther. We all had a hand in it, all the way back to when we were kids; Five was right about that much. It took all of us to fuck things up bad enough for the world to end, and it took all of us to un-fuck it too. And don't forget the person with the biggest slice of the blame pie is dear old dad. So You wanna take some responsibility fine. But don't give yourself all the credit, okay?"

Luther nodded, though he was having a hard time agreeing. He should have been a better leader. At the very least, a better brother. Well, he got his second chance, didn't he? All it cost was a Fiver.


	4. Memories (Light the Corners of My Mind)

**4:17pm, Sunday April 18th, 2019**

It started with his necktie. More specifically, it started with Vanya asking him why he wasn't wearing it.

He'd brushed the question aside as irrelevant, though with more benevolence than if anyone else had been asking. The answer was simple of course; he'd forgotten to put it on. But mundane as the answer might be the question shook him badly, because until that moment he would have sworn he'd been wearing one.

He'd forgotten to put it on.

He smiled at her with polite forbearance and shooed her away, jumped to his room and locked the door. He spent the rest of the afternoon cataloging his memory and found it imperfect. He was forgetting things. Little things, true, but he was forgetting. The truly chilling part was that he hadn't even noticed.

Five had an eidetic memory. Five never 'forgot' anything. (His life being what it was, he had long since accepted this as more curse than blessing.)

He'd spent 23.5 million minutes with Dolores before returning her to Gimbel's. Wrote out 2.4 million variations of the same Eisenstein equations. He remembered the title of every book he's ever read, the name of every person he'd ever killed (even if he pretended not to). He could calculate with absolute certainty how many days he'd spent in the apocalypse, if he cared to think about it (he didn't). In his head was a timeline that never existed (a lifetime that never existed) and today he'd forgotten to put on his tie.

If there was a constant in Five's world, it was his mind; the only thing he had ever been able to rely upon completely. The only thing that had never failed him in some capacity. True, he was trapped for forty years or so in a post-apocalyptic wasteland but it was his rashness that had taken him there, not his mind. (If he'd been using his brain at all that morning he never would have attempted it.)

It was that eidetic memory filled with years of mathematical equations and quantum physics which he could recall with perfect clarity that finally led him home; the Commission hadn't had anything to do with that. (He'd known the calculations were off, Dolores had told him as much).

The calculations were off and he'd forgotten his tie.

He had suspicions, of course. He suspected he knew what was happening to him. He suspected it would get much worse. He suspected there was no cure beyond the finality of a bullet to the head.

Five was a pragmatic man who'd dealt in harsh realities his entire life. He had no illusions about what would happen should his mind start to fail him completely. Were that time to come, he would finish it himself. After sixty years of hard choices, of surviving rather than living, of training himself not to think about the things he's done because it was the closest he could get to truly forgetting, he was not afraid to die. He didn't _want_ to die, but he wasn't afraid (it was a waste of energy to fear something so inevitable). But the slow unwinding of his mind...that terrified him. Thus should it come to pass he was determined to go on his own terms, with full knowledge of the choices he made and at least some few shreds of dignity intact.

But although a gun in his mouth would put a quick and painless end to the problem it was a premature solution so he did not contemplate it too deeply. There was no way of knowing how far or fast his condition might deteriorate without further observation, thus he didn't yet have enough data to act in his own best interest. He must carefully monitor himself for signs of further regression, and act accordingly.

He began keeping notes.

His siblings were used to his constant scribbling and thus largely ignored him. It helped immensely that he had long ago created a code that substituted letters, words and common phrases for numbers and equations. To everyone else it looked like nothing more than a series of complex mathematical formula, and in a way it was. The difference being that once solved the equation revealed words instead of numbers. He'd developed it as a child as a way to keep everyone out of his business, refined it in the apocalypse as a way to stave off madness and finally perfected it during his time at the Commission to avoid the prying eyes of his superiors as he quietly planned mutiny. He could now write in code nearly twice as fast as normal handwriting. It was an elegant way to assure privacy, if he did say so himself.

He began carrying a notebook everywhere, integers and symbols filling the pages and scribbled up into the margins. What he had for breakfast, where he went, who he talked to and what they were wearing; an entire blueprint of his days transposed into mathematical formula. He didn't fear anyone deciphering it and thus wrote openly, keeping a running catalog of his actions.

At night he practiced eidetic recall and compared it to the notes he'd made throughout the day. It was disheartening to discover how many of the details had begun to escape him.


	5. Regrets Left Unspoken

**2:38pm, Friday August 16th, 2019**

Diego watches him from the doorway, arms folded across his chest like a shield. Five is motionless, doll-like, anti-psychotic meds keeping him locked in a state of near catatonia. His chest rises and falls with each quiet breath and Diego envies him that much at least; he feels like he hasn't been able to breathe properly since he got back from New York this morning.

They'd weathered a couple violent episodes before but nothing like this.

Diego frowns and shakes his head at no one in particular. Five is getting worse. He's getting worse faster than they can adapt to and none of them know what to do about it.

The trip to New York had been a colossal waste of time, ending with the same prognosis as always; they weren't sure what was wrong, they didn't know how to treat it, they wanted to run some more tests and there wasn't a cure for the dementia Five appeared to be suffering from but they were more than happy to stuff him full of drug cocktails and poke around at what was left of his brain provided his siblings kept the checks coming. Barring that, there were a number of 'very fine' institutions they could look into.

Not for the first time, Diego wonders if they'd made the right call when they stopped Five from-

"Hey," Vanya says quietly, sliding up next to him. The whole family's here today; they have a lot of things to discuss. "How is he?"

His shoulder twitches. "Asleep," he replies. He tries to think of something to add to that but all good words have absconded to higher ground. "How's Klaus?" He asks finally, even though he'd just talked to him.

"He's okay," Vanya says, seeming happy to be able to deliver some good news. "Just bruises."

"Idiot," Diego spits. "I told him to be careful. Five's-"

Dangerous. Five is dangerous. They _had_ to start accepting that about him. This went beyond loud noises and paper plates.

"-our brother," Vanya says, seeming to know what he's thinking.

"Is he?" Diego asks bitterly and leaves. He has to get away from this fucking room.

* * *

They're arguing again, though the mood all around is more subdued than in times past, everyone talking in hushed voices despite the subject of conversation being two floors above them and dead to the world. This time they're gathered in the lounge and this time Klaus isn't the only one with a drink in his hand. It's been a rough couple months for all of them.

"I'm with Luther," Vanya says, her face pale and strained. "I don't like the idea of hospice."

Diego's jaw clinches. Like anyone fucking _liked_ it. He glances at Allison for support and she leans forward.

"They said it was worth looking into, based on the current rate of deterioration." Allison's probably the most composed among them right now but that was the actress in her. Not a bad performance overall but he'd been there with her on the flight home. He knows how hard she's taking it.

"How long has he got?" asks Klaus, voice still not recovered completely and it just goes to show how screwed up everything is that Klaus of all people is proving to be the reasonable one and asking the important questions. Then again he was almost killed-

Diego has to stop thinking about that right now or he's going to lose what's left of his cool.

"They don't know know for sure," Allison answers, and her voice is steady but her eyes are bright. "Maybe-maybe not longer than a month or two."

_If he's lucky_ Diego thinks. Otherwise it could be much, much longer. That's something he doesn't think either Luther or Vanya have considered. By the time he pulls himself away from those thoughts he's missed a good chunk of the conversation.

"A nurse wouldn't know what to do for him-" Vanya's saying again, same familiar litany falling from her lips but Diego is tired of that cuts her off.

"_We_ don't know what to do for him!" He counters, and he can tell by their faces they know he's right even if they don't want to admit it.

"You're asking us to give up on him," Luther says, immovable as always, a belligerent set to his shoulders.

"No, I just want us all to stop pretending like this is something we can deal with ourselves." The irony isn't lost on him, of course. The Umbrella Academy, the child prodigies, honest-to-god superheroes that saved the world and couldn't save their own brother.

"Okay, you want to be the one to explain to the doctors what happened to Five? Because they still think he has Alzheimer's"

"You wanna stop pretending like he's gonna get better?" Diego shoots back, "'cause he's not." And Jesus, talk about the shoe being on the other fucking foot. Four months ago Luther was the asshole in the room, wanting to switch off their mom and lock up their sister, and Diego had fought him on both points. Now look at him. The difference was that both times Luther had acted out of fear, paranoia and ignorance. Diego has better reasons than those.

Luther's mouth is an inflexible line of pure obstinance. "If there's any chance-"

"Is there? We've already talked to every specialist we can find. Thrown money at every research institute on the continent."

"You think we should have just let him die? Is that what you're saying?" Klaus asks and fuck, not Klaus too. This three against two shit was just unfair.

"No. No I'm not saying we should have let him die. I'm just saying I understand why he didn't want to live. He's a thirteen year old with dementia-"

"He doesn't have-" Luther starts in again and Diego wants to slug him because that is so not the fucking point.

"Shut up, Just shut up and listen. Names don't matter; call it whatever you want to. But he's thirteen and his mind is going. He barely recognizes us; I don't think he even knows where he is anymore. How much longer is it gonna be before he can't even go to the bathroom by himself? And his body's _thirteen_. Maybe this thing - whatever it is - kills him. But maybe not. Physically he's as strong and fast as ever. Klaus had the same basic combat training as the rest of us, so Five never would have gotten the drop on him otherwise. Whatever's happening, its not effecting his body. That means he could live another fifty, sixty years wearing diapers, not even knowing his own name. We could die from old age and he could still be here.

You all keep saying it's up to us because we know him. Well that's right, we do. And we all know that isn't the way he'd want to live, but that may be the choice we made for him. Now I don't regret saving his life, so I can own that. Can you? Cause it comes with some pretty unpleasant fucking realities."

His words drop into a heavy silence and for a few moments no one says anything at all. It's Luther who speaks first. "Last time I gave up on a member of this family the world ended. I'm not going to make that mistake again."

Diego nods, feeling like maybe, just maybe they were finished going around in circles. "So what are we going to do? 'Cause he's getting worse, and we can't deal with this on our own anymore."


	6. A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

** 5:18pm, April 19th, 2009**

It was over, fini. Put the pen down, close the book. Apocalypse successfully diverted (probably). Of course nothing in the universe came with a gold-star guarantee but given the way the Commission threw everything they had at them, Five thought they might have actually pulled off a win.

But goddamn, the cost had been high.

He pressed his bloodied lips together, the familiar ache in his chest like a bad habit he refused to give into. There was no time. There was never time. The profound irony of that fact was not lost on him, but it's contemplation was another thing he didn't have time for. They had to get moving. The Commission _would_ be back.

"We have to go," he told them, exhaustion pulling at every vein in his body (the Commission death squads hadn't gone down easy). Vanya looked up at him from where she cradled Ben's head in her lap, face tear-streaked and messy but he didn't have time for anyone's sorrow right now. He had to get them _away_. "They'll be back. We have to leave, now."

Once more into the breech.

"So let them," she said simply, vengeance shaping the words into sharp-edged knives and he knew what she wanted because he wanted it too, but not here and not now. There was too much at risk.

"Vanya," he said, kneeling next to her, voice filled with quiet urgency, "We can't stay here. You're still- you almost lost control. If they come back and you fight them, you'll win...you could also end up destroying the world again. We have to _run_." The next words were harsh but also true. "You're too emotional right now."

A gasp went up from his siblings, wide-eyed shock at his callousness but there was no time for mourning; he knew what was coming. Why should they be surprised anyway? He was an old man. An old soldier with old wounds; he didn't waste tears on the dead.

"How can you-" Luther began but Five's glare stuck the words in his throat like a garrote around the neck.

"We don't. Have. _Time_," he ground out, feeling like a broken record skipping over the same tired words as he took Vanya's arm. "They are going to come back. Vanya needs more training to work on her control and we can give her that but not here, not now. If we jump, it'll take them awhile to find us. If you've got a problem with that we can hug it out on the other side."

"Why would they come after us if we've changed things?" Allison asks. "If there's no apocalypse for you to get stuck in then how would the Commission even know about you or us? Why would they care?"

Five's face folded in annoyance. "The Commission exists outside of time; it's how they monitor things. They know what happened, what's happening and what's supposed to happen. They aren't a part of the timeline; they're above it. The changes won't effect them, but it_ will_ piss them off. So I need to get us out of here."

"Yeah but you're barely on your feet," Diego said, which was true enough. Five had nearly ran himself into the ground in the ensuing firefight, and even then he hadn't been able to save everyone. That thought made the stitch in his heart throb but he ignored it with the practiced ease of forty years experience. (It didn't hurt any less, but it was a familiar pain; a chronic ache in his soul he'd long grown used to.)

"I'll get you home safe," he said, looking around at the sorrow-drowned faces of his remaining siblings. "I'll get you all home safe, I promise. But we need to go._ Now_."

"All except Ben," Vanya said and Five just looked at her because he didn't have a witty retort for that. He hadn't - couldn't - correct everything wrong with the old timeline. He wished he could. He'd_ tried_ but he's out of chances. Going back a second time meant reopening it to the possibility of another apocalypse. That Five would not do. Not for love or money or all the stars in the sky.

Not even for Ben.

Well, he could dwell on his failings later. Right now there were more important things. "We need to go," he said again.

Surprisingly it was Luther who seemed to come to his senses first. "All right," he said, bending down and pulling Ben's body into his arms. "All right. Everyone in a circle like last time."

Five stared at him. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not leaving his body here to rot. He deserves a proper burial."

How did it always happen that just when Five thought he'd gotten his siblings heading in something akin to the right direction they did shit like this? "There- there's probably not going to be much left of him when we get back to the future," he pointed out. It was as delicate a way he could say he didn't want to drag a corpse through ten plus years of decay in the time stream. But if he expected Luther to be reasonable, he was in for some serious disappointment.

"We're taking him back," Luther said again, and Five didn't have any more time to argue about it.

"Fine." Leave Luther to his gruesome coping mechanisms. Five had to get his family away from this moment in time, throw the Commission off the scent while he figured out how to keep them safe.

He nearly stumbled as he made his way into the circle and took a spot between Vanya and Klaus, but there was no time to waste on such corporal considerations like weakness or fatigue. Story of his life, that. (Possibly it's ending, too.)

He took a deep breath and reminded himself that going forward was infinitely easier than going back; it shouldn't be nearly as hard this time (self deception was an invaluable tool). His tired gaze settled on Luther, his face a mask of grief as he held their brother's body in his arms and the ache in Five's heart matched the bullet hole over Ben's, blood on his shirt like a silent condemnation.

He told himself it was an acceptable loss; Five siblings for the price of one (maybe two). Basic math. It was what it was. He closed his eyes, gathered the last of his strength and pulled his family into an uncertain future.


	7. An Empire of Dirt

**7:23pm, Friday August 26th, 2019**

Allison once thought she had the entire world at her feet.

She could have anything she wanted, all she had to do was find the right ear to whisper in. She'd relished in the power of being able to bend the world to suit her, spreading her whims about like candy. She thought it would last forever, that she was untouchable.

Then Ben died.

He died and she realized the harsh limits of her abilities. Her illusions shattered on impact against that cold wall of reality, left her holding shards of empty wishes like broken glass.

Turns out you can't rumor people back from the dead.

For all the hours of specialized training with their father, Ben's death had been her first real lesson.

(She hadn't learned it.)

She ran from it instead, as far and fast as her legs would carry her. Ran all the way to California where she put down roots and started over, rebuilding her empty life one lie after another, building the foundation of her new world on Rumor (because if everything was gained through her power, then there was nothing she could lose that her power couldn't replace). And it was good, for awhile.

But then there was Claire, and Claire wasn't a rumor.

Claire was an accident.

A happy accident, a beloved accident, but an accident all the same. She hadn't intended to get pregnant, had no pretensions to motherhood (like she knew anything about babies). But it happened and she kept her and her name was Claire and she was the light of Allison's world. She was also the fly in the ointment of her carefully constructed, prefabricated life.

Because Claire's love for her was _real_, the smile on her face and the light in her eyes when she looked at Allison didn't come from any rumor. It was her own; genuine, fierce and honest and it stripped Allison of every conceit, made the rest of her world feel counterfeit and hollow.

There was no lie that could withstand the reality of that love. That was her second lesson.

(She hadn't learned that one, either.)

It wasn't until lesson number three, when she lost the only real thing she had that she began to learn. By then of course, the fear was that it was all a bit too late.

But she tried. For once in her life she really tried. She put her rumors to bed and kissed them goodnight, determined to build up again. Not with lies but with the brick and mortar of hard work and her own two hands. She would make a foundation strong enough for Claire to stand on. (This time, she was going to earn her daughter's love.) So she sat through parenting classes with her face flushing with shame, complied with court-mandated therapy as she learned to live without her lies. Talked to her daughter on the phone and saw her on the occasional, CPS-chaperoned weekend (Allison wasn't allowed to be alone with her).

The withdrawal from the drug of rumor was as real to her as any junkie but she pushed through, focused on work and her daughter and then...then her father died. Then Five came back. Then Vanya and Harold happened and the apocalypse almost happened and none of it happened and the timeline reset.

Ben died again; lesson revisited.

But at the end of it all, at least she still had Claire. Thank God that for any other changes, she still had her daughter. Five had saved her along with the rest of the world.

But who was going to save Five?

* * *

This time, she doesn't run. She's learned that lesson she thinks, and so she stays. Allison stays and does what she can for her brother, but as she well knows her powers only extend so far. She'd rumor him better if she could but it didn't work that way (she knows, she's tried). She can influence people, change the way they think and act but she can't alter reality itself; can't change the nightmare they're living and make it not real. She can ease Five's pain so he could finally sleep but she can't fix whatever's wrong with his mind.

She can't make a better or softer world for any of them.

Some things just stay broken.

"I heard a rumor you ate your dinner tonight," she says gently and his eyes glow under the power of suggestion before he picks up his spoon and beings eating with mechanical indifference. She sighs, her heart a dead weight in the pit of her stomach. Somewhere back in California Claire was getting kissed on the forehead and tucked into bed. Somewhere in California Claire was living life without her. Somewhere in California the world turned and Claire was happy and Allison was here, trying to help the brother who had lost his mind to save their lives.

After Patrick and Claire she told herself never again, but here she was, night after night, rumor after rumor.

_"I heard a rumor you were feeling better."_

_"I heard a rumor you weren't in any pain."_

_"I heard a rumor you took your medication."_

_"I heard a rumor you don't want to hurt anyone."_

Five would hate her if he knew. But then again Five would hate everything about this situation; Diego had been right about that.

Grace looks up from her nigh-constant place by the door and gives an encouraging smile as he eats. Her presence was a temporary solution until a qualified staff could be put in place, a search that was proving more difficult than they'd first imagined. (There weren't that many registered nurses who were also self-defense experts.)

The fight over whether or not to start some sort of hospice had come to a sudden and irrevocable end Sunday night when Five attacked Vanya and she almost killed him on instinct, her power still nebulous and difficult for her to contain. For the next several days the kitchen table was covered in End Of Life Care pamphlets and no one went into Five's room alone.

He spent those days rumored into unconsciousness and tied to the bed. They hadn't known what else to do.

At-home care was at least a unilateral decision; none of them really wanted to think about what might happen if they sent Five away anywhere. He would probably kill someone, and he would almost certainly never come home. Besides, at the end of a long, violent and lonely life surely it wasn't too much to ask that he be allowed to die at home, even if he'd never really gotten to live there. (You couldn't have called their militia-style childhoods 'living' so much as surviving.)

That thought makes her heart hurt and her eyes sting.

He finishes eating and she takes the spoon away as a precaution. (She'd seen what he could do during their fight with the Commission and she's pretty sure he could kill someone with a plastic spoon if he wanted to.)

Not that Five looked capable of killing anyone at the moment. His mental state was deteriorating at a pace that had his doctors baffled, the periods of lucidity being few and far between. Most days he muttered to himself, scribbled on the walls, or sat doing nothing at all much as he was now. At least they could say he was only _occasionally_ violent.

_He's going to die_ she thinks, watching his empty eyed gaze flitter about like a tattered-winged moth. It finally settles on Dolores, the other constant presence in the room and he gives the barest shadow of a smile. Diego and Klaus had broken into Gimbel's last week and stolen her back, presented her with hopeful faces to a Five who seemed to have lost interest in everything around him.

For a few days it even seemed to work. Five had been drawn to her, something in his splintered brain seeming to recognize Dolores even as his siblings continued to be strangers. That had stung, if she's being honest with herself. But he calmed down, became less agitated, started sleeping more. Went back to scribbling on the walls instead of clawing at them.

Allison had taken some pictures of those white-chalked equations and sent them to a maths professor she knew in California. His response was what she'd expected, but it was still disheartening. They were made up of various pieces of mathematical formula mashed together and didn't mean anything at all. He acknowledged there was a scattered genius to some of it, but the larger part was unintelligible gibberish. He ended the conversation by noting that he would have liked to have known 'the boy' before his sudden mental decline.

Allison can't help but agree.


	8. Bright Stars, Paper Moon

**5:33pm, April 3rd, 2019**

He'd told himself it was easier to go forward in time than back, and that was true. Usually. But he was already exhausted and slipping between the viaducts of the space-time continuum took a great amount of both concentration and energy, particularly when one was towing six extra people in their wake.

If he was too weak to _start_ a jump, nothing would happen; there was neither loss nor gain. But what happened when he had enough energy to begin the journey yet not complete it? That was a question he could have lived the rest of his life not knowing the answer to.

The answer was that the energy had to come from somewhere. If it did not, he would die (as would anyone else traveling in the time stream with him). Thus his power would take what it needed from his body to complete the circuit, and it did.

All-in-all, he's lucky to have hit the right decade, let alone the correct week.

* * *

The universe regurgitated them onto the front steps of the academy, spat out like a bad taste and Five was puking almost before his feet hit the ground, every organ in his body trying to simultaneously turn itself inside out. He tumbled forward, just enough brain matter left to throw his arms out and prevent a face-plant onto the cement. He heaved, bile-and-blood taste filling his mouth as he retched, weak and helpless as a newborn.

Until this moment, he'd thought the phrase 'puking your guts out' was just a colorful expression.

But as the Handler had so astutely pointed out, even he had limits. Limits which he'd apparently exceeded to a breathtaking degree.

There was noise distortion all around him, head a multi-colored kaleidoscope of pain flashing in nauseating shades of red, orange and white. He felt unraveled, as if someone had plucked a thread from him and he'd come apart at the seams, leaving behind a twitching pile of exposed nerves, pieces of himself scattered like breadcrumbs from one side of the time vortex to the other. He couldn't even _see_, eyes swallowed in flickering blue fire.

He wasn't entirely sure, but it felt an awful lot like dying.

The universe just might have succeeded in killing him after all.

Five had an eidetic memory and was very technically conscious, but there wasn't much he'd remember about the day they came back. He wouldn't remember being carried into the house by his brothers and pressed into a bed. He wouldn't remember gentle hands removing his shoes, or loosening his tie so he could breathe. He wouldn't remember the slow procession of bodies trailing in and out of his room, talking in hushed voices.

* * *

** 1:58pm, April 6th, 2019**

He slept for two days (that was the official story, anyway).

That wasn't time he could afford (no time, no time, same familiar song) but it's not as though he could have done anything about it. On the third day he rose like an ignominious and twisted messiah, ate every scrap of food in the house then disappeared back into his room to think. He tried to warp there but even after two days the attempt left him feeling weak and dizzy so he was obliged to take the stairs, which also left him feeling weak and dizzy. Wonderful.

He still had a headache. He shouldn't still have a headache, not after two days. Then again he shouldn't have drug six extra people back and forth through time either, so.

The date on the calendar said April 6th, 2019. Six days after the apocalypse and the world was still spinning. There were no fires burning out of control, spewing ash into the sky. No toppled buildings, no rotting corpses. His clothes were clean, the air fresh. He was home and the apocalypse hadn't happened.

They'd done it, they'd won. The moon would shine tonight and the sun would rise tomorrow and neither would be shrouded by orange colored clouds reflecting the light of a thousand burning cities.

He savored it for a moment, just for a moment. Opened the window and breathed in clean air, listened to the sounds of a living world. And if the clean air was technically over a dumpster and the sounds were car horns and quarreling neighbors and a cat in heat yowling at the sky, well. It was still good, still so much better than ashes and dust. This was the world he'd come back to save, asshole neighbors and all.

"Shut the fuck up!" he shouted at them, something akin to happiness trying to insinuate itself under his skin. "Some of us are trying to sleep!"

"It's the middle of the afternoon, jackass!" came the acerbic response and Five found himself breaking into a grin.

"Fuck you!" he shouted cheerfully_. I saved your life, asshole_.

"Get fucked ya little prick!" Ah yes, he was home.

He shut the window with a satisfied click and then- and then he remembered Ben.

Ben had died (again). Ben was dead (again).

The smile fell from his face as he realized he'd forgotten. How could he forget? In hindsight that should have bothered him far more than it did, but at the time he chalked it up to the headache and having nearly died himself and all that fun stuff.

He wondered if they'd buried him yet; he hoped so. He'd buried enough siblings for one lifetime and didn't relish the idea of starting up again. If not, he hoped they didn't hold it against him if he didn't attend the funeral. He's carried a funeral in his heart for forty-five years; formalities didn't mean much anymore.

He set those thoughts aside as unhelpful and irrelevant. It didn't matter, back to the business at hand. The business was this: it was April 6th, 2019. The apocalypse had been canceled and he knew the Commission too well to believe they would let that slide. Five had to assume they were going to come looking for either answers or revenge and he had to keep what was left of his family safe.

How he was going to achieve that goal he didn't know, but he'd think of something.

He always thought of something.

He started writing on the walls.


	9. No Devil, Just God When He's Drunk

**1:27pm, Monday August 29th, 2019**

Things might have gone differently if they'd had more time, but the progression of Five's illness was devastatingly swift, taking him from perfectly healthy young man to nearly helpless invalid in a few short months. By the time they'd realized how serious things were, it had been too late.

Of course it hadn't helped that Five had kept his condition a secret from them, until he couldn't anymore, until he was too confused to keep track of his own obfuscations. (Until he thought the only way out was suicide.) He was good at keeping them at arm's length, knew all their weaknesses and would exploit them with ruthless efficiency until they retreated, casting him long looks over their shoulder and muttering under their breath.

Vanya wonders what would have happened if he hadn't. If they could have done something, found him help before he was beyond reach. If nothing else, she would have spent more _time_ with him. She would have done a lot of things differently, if she'd known. But she'd spent the first month back blaming herself for Ben, for what everyone had gone through because of her. She'd been wrapped up in her own guilt and preoccupation with controlling her powers and she'd missed the signs, the changes in Five.

She should have been paying more attention.

* * *

It was over a month after they'd gotten back from the past when he appeared in the middle of her living room, familiar zap of electrical fire ozone smell and right away, she knew something was wrong. He looked confused, disoriented, glancing about like a man waking from a ten year coma and Five had never looked confused about anything in his life. He'd _been_ confused, certainly, but he'd always been too self-possessed to let it show. God forbid there ever be something Number Five didn't understand; the sky would fall.

"Five?"

His head whipped around and he stared like she was some distant acquaintance who's name he couldn't recall and she remembered thinking, _There's something wrong with him._

"Vanya?" His voice came out wrong; timid and uncertain. A tocsin sounded in her head, all the fire alarms pulled at once.

"Are you okay?" she asked, worry wrapping itself around her throat and squeezing. She wanted to go to him but was afraid of getting too close just yet. There was a delicacy in dealing with Five, much the same way there was a delicacy in handling poisonous snakes. If you weren't careful, you got bit.

"...yes," he said, two seconds too slow to be genuine. His tie was on crooked, hair dusted with chalk, a smear of white at the edge of his brow and caked in the cuticles of his fingernails but he didn't seem physically harmed, just fatally distracted. She wondered if he had a concussion, some undiagnosed head injury.

"What happened?" she asked, and he blinked.

"Nothing." He lied much better the second time, but he still couldn't tell her why he was there.

She took him back to the academy with worry chewing the edges of her every thought, though in hindsight the most worrying thing about it all was how little he had protested her company. She suspected it was because he didn't know how to get back on his own.

Once there Five disappeared upstairs and the family came clustering around her like moths, mouths like fluttering wings, hasty half-whispers voicing concerns about Five's increasingly odd behavior and forgetfulness and had she noticed? No, no she had not and she realized with a stricken pain that he'd been avoiding her.

A family meeting was called in which Five deflected every question put to him, insulted each them in a commanding fashion with increasingly compelling punctuation and finally warped away in a petulant flicker of blue. They decided to start keeping a closer eye on him. (The trouble of course being that Five wasn't an easy person to keep an eye on.)

That was the first time he'd made an erratic jump, but it wouldn't be the last.

* * *

She stays at the academy almost full time now, her inheritance enough at least to ensure she wouldn't have to work for awhile so she quit the orchestra and passed off her students to other teachers and all but moved back into her childhood hell, better to give Five her full attention. (It was still hell, but for a much different reason.)

They're still going through the motions of talking to various doctors but she thinks they've mostly resigned themselves. It feels like they're all just waiting around, marking the hours and days one at a time until the inevitable end, even though none of them know how long that will be. Diego still feared Five would live for years like this, but Vanya isn't so sure. She thinks one day he may simply forget how to breathe.

She stays with him more often than her siblings, operating at least in part out of some feeling of penance, but mostly because her presence agitated him less than the others. He's calmer around her, and occasionally even lucid (at least he had been, in the beginning).

She doesn't want to admit it, but those periods of lucidity became almost unbearable towards the end. The times when he'd look at her and recognize her as Vanya were the times he recognized what was happening to him. She'd watched him oscillate through four of the five stages of grief (never quite reaching acceptance) before the fog claimed him again. It was worse the further his illness progressed, when he'd forget he was fifty-eight. When he was thirteen again and scared and confused and he didn't understand why she looked so old. (She described these moments in only the broadest terms to the family; no more than what was needed to keep an accurate medical record. The details she kept locked in her heart, no matter how deeply they cut.)

Reginald Hargreeves had been wrong: time travel hadn't contaminated Five's mind, it had devoured it.

She spends a lot of hours playing the violin for him.

It's the oldest of cliches, but her reasoning isn't entirely sentimental. Music helps her too, helps ground her and direct the immensely destructive power that swelled inside her whenever she got emotional, and she's always emotional these days. (She'd wanted practice learning how to control and manage her power. She got it.)

In a better world her music would mean something, make some kind of difference. If life were a movie her violin would be the connective tissue between herself and Five, between Five and his memories. He'd smile when she played, maybe even recognize her. At the very least he would _look_ at her, and she'd know she was bringing him a measure of peace. It would be a healing moment for the two of them.

But this isn't a happy world and her music doesn't mean anything to him anymore. Eventually she had to admit that she's playing because she doesn't know what else to do.

She's playing because if she doesn't, she'll scream instead.

* * *

Another family meeting. Another day of somber faces around the kitchen table, going over the latest candidates for hospice providers. They've actually managed to agree on two out of three, but the last one is a sticking point. Luther's unilaterally vetoing any female applicants on the grounds that Five was a physical risk. Diego's calling him an idiot, pointing out that Allison had 'rumored the fight out of him', which Vanya thinks is a harsh way to put it even if it's technically correct. (The problem is that 'fight' seems to be all that Five had left of himself and without it he's an empty shell.)

There's a tension in the air like a cut-off scream, something too thick to account for a simple disagreement over nursing staff. Diego and Luther are getting louder, talking over each other as Klaus and Allison look on with wearied, defeated expressions and everyone's ragged, on edge and exhausted. Vanya just wants them to come to some sort of consensus; she's tired of useless meetings, empty words and lacks of progress. She's tired, full stop.

(She just wants it to end, and can't say whether that sentiment is only in regards to the meeting or not.)

She closes her eyes and rubs her temples, a headache starting behind her eyes. Had she slept at all last night? She can't remember.

"Perhaps I can be of some assistance," says a voice behind them and it takes Vanya a moment to realize it wasn't just in her head.

Diego stops mid-sentence and they all turn as one. There's a woman standing in the doorway to the kitchen; platinum blonde curls and garish red lipstick. She's wearing a half veil over her face and looks like a Stepford wife dressed for a funeral, all the way down to her black, pointed-toe heels. There's a briefcase in her hand and Vanya sees Luther's eyes go wide as he catches sight of it.

"Who the hell are you?" demands Allison, but Luther steps forward.

"You're from the Commission," he says, and the woman smiles. There's something infinitely cold and empty underneath all that lipstick and eyeliner and it makes Vanya shudder.


	10. This Old Man (He Played Five)

**3:43pm, Tuesday June 11th, 2019**

It was all fading away.

Memories like smoke, like cinder ash, grains of sand washed out to sea by a relentless, uncaring tide and he felt submerged, ten thousand feet below the surface where it was dark and cold, the weight of an ocean pressing him down. Hard to breathe. Even harder to think, to remember.

Nothing lived down here.

There was so much he couldn't remember any more...names, facts, days of the week. Sometimes he had trouble remembering their faces, remembering they weren't dead, that the world still turned on it's axis, brilliant shades of blue and green. Was he thirteen, or fifty-eight? Was the apocalypse coming, or had it already happened? He'd go looking for Dolores and then realize she wasn't there anymore.

Occasionally, he went looking for Ben.

He had trouble controlling his jumps. He'd blink and suddenly find himself outside or on the stairs or in the foyer. Once he tried jumping to his room and ended up in the park. He'd wandered, searching for familiar faces, landmarks, anything. He's seen a woman wearing a white blouse with black polka-dots and something about her seemed familiar to him. He'd followed her for six blocks before he forgot what he was doing, tenuous memories sinking below the surface again, lost. It took the family three hours to find him, and when they asked he couldn't explain how he got there.

* * *

His siblings were relentless. They would barely leave him alone and for all that he did care for them, he couldn't stand being fawned over. The pity and sadness in their eyes chafed against his skin like sandpaper, left him feeling raw and exposed and he wanted to yell at them, tell them to toughen up and get over it and start living the lives he gave back to them.

What had been the fucking point of it all if they were just going to insist on being miserable about things they couldn't control?

And he was so fucking _tired_.

Tired of appointments and tests and pills with their kaleidoscope of side effects. Tired of being poked and prodded and condescended to by doctors who didn't (couldn't) know what they were talking about. (There was no cure for what ailed him anyway, he knew that well enough.) Tired of not remembering, tired of remembering the wrong things. Tired of falling asleep and wondering who he would wake up as. Tired of losing minutes and hours to the fog, time no longer linear but broken, spiderwebbed like pavement cracks.

He'd never wanted them to see him this way. He hadn't wanted _this_ to be their last memories of him.

* * *

He started by saying goodbye to Dolores, though he didn't let her see him. He didn't want her to worry. Besides, she looked happy and he didn't have the right to take that from her._ Someone_ ought to get a happy ending in this story and it seemed right that it be her; she deserved that much at least. (Most of all though, he didn't want her talking him out of it.) She was better off without him anyway. No, he did not let her see him; this farewell was for himself alone. He spent awhile watching her, recalling as much of their time together as he could.

It wasn't twenty-three and half million minutes anymore.

He left before he could forget who she was and perhaps if Five had been more himself, more observant and aware of his surroundings he would have noticed the man with the briefcase who watched him from the background.

* * *

The note was short and to the point; the words "I'm sorry" and a location where they could find his body. He didn't have the mental wherewithal for long-winded letters and anyway, he didn't think there was much else to say.

_Liar_. (There was too much to say. There was forty-five years of things to say and he didn't have words for any of it, even the bits he could remember.)

He knew the perfect place. Not here, not the academy. Bad enough they'd have to bury another sibling; he wasn't going to leave a mess for them to clean up as well. Besides, he didn't want to die inside these dreary walls. There was a large building downtown that overlooked the city; a beautiful observation deck on the roof. He could stand there and take it all in; sunlight shining down on the world. Trees and parks and houses like perfect square boxes with living people inside and blue skies undirtied by ashes and dust. Life in every direction as far as his eyes could see. He wanted to die under a blue sky, in a world filled with growing things.

It was a good place; peaceful. No one would bother him there.

For as confused as he was these days, his hands still knew their way around a gun. (M9 baretta, military issue.) He didn't remember how he got it, but he knew what to do with it. It was instinctive, a natural extension of his own arm. He could do it blindfolded. (He probably had, at some point.)

He needed to finish this before he forgot how to pull the trigg-

A knock on the door. His thoughts went tumbling around his head like a pair of dice, coming up sixes and sevens. Why was someone at the door?

"Yoo-hoo!" ...Klaus. That was Klaus. Klaus was knocking on his door. He tucked the gun under his pillow, unthinking, walked three steps to the door and opened it. "Klaus?" he asked, trying not to sound as confused as he felt. "What are you doing here?"

Klaus leaned forward, face tight and jittery and Five wondered if he was using again (again? Had he stopped?) "I need to show you something," he said in a conspiratorial whisper.

Five blinked at him. "No, I'm busy."

"Come on," Klaus whined, going so far as to wrap his hand around Five's arm and draw him forward.

Five was too confused to stop him and let himself be pulled on like a toy on a string, ended up in the hallway. "What-" he said, then stopped. Nothing was making sense.

The problem, he thought, was Klaus' shirt. It was some horrid, garish thing he's certain had been fished out of a reject bin at the local thrift store. It made his eyes hurt to look at it. (There may have been more pressing matters to attend to but that shirt was an affront to his sensibilities.)

"What are you wearing?" he asked, bewildered. He'd been doing something important...

"Oh, do you like it?" he looked at Five expectantly, holding the vomit-patterned cloth out for closer inspection.

"No," Five said and Klaus peered at him, eyes suddenly clear as chips of ice.

"Are you feeling okay?"

No. Of course he wasn't. What a stupid question. Out loud he simply said "No," again, then turned and marched back to his room. This time he locked the door.

He never did find out what Klaus had wanted to show him. Not that it mattered (he'd just forget about it anyway).

* * *

He closed his eyes and felt the sun on his face; first fair weather day after three days of rain and the world smelled scrubbed clean, baptized by water, the sky a fierce and relentless blue. There was fresh air up here and Five took in several deep breathes, savoring it. In his head he said goodbye to each of his siblings in turn. They would mourn him, but at least they would mourn_ him_, while there was enough of him left to mourn. It was fine, he was ready. He'd lived a long, mostly unhappy life. He didn't want to die the same way.

Time for this old man to get some rest.

He put the gun to his head, pulled the trigger...nothing happened.

He tried again, and again, and again (somewhere he'd read that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results).

He checked the gun, deeply confused. The empty magazine stared up at him like an accusation, the perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with his life right now. He'd been standing there holding an empty gun to his head like the goddamn idiot he was turning into.

But he had loaded it, hadn't he? (_Safety off, pull forward the slide. Insert bullet, release slide. Magazine, safety.)_ He was sure he had...but now he couldn't quite remember actually going through the motions. How could he have forgotten to load his gun? It was instinctive, a natural extension...

He'd never remember how long he stood there, staring at his useless weapon, the fog around his mind slowing chewing up the minutes but by the time he came back to himself it was too late.

The family was there.

"We got your note," Diego said, breathing hard, voice pitched somewhere between anger and worry.


	11. Of Endings and Beginnings

**1:42pm, Monday August 29th, 2019**

"No," says Luther, his voice firm. "Absolutely not. You're not 'taking' Five anywhere."

The Handler smiles, cigarette holder piercing the corner of her mouth and it reminds Vanya of a cartoon villain; Cruella DeVil come to sew herself a coat of puppy skins. It makes her own skin crawl, that smile. It wasn't exactly sinister but it was cold, painted on and vaguely inhuman. If these were the sort of people Five had met in the future then small wonder he'd come back so...her mind groped for a gentle word. _Inaccessible_. "Not even somewhere he can get help?" she asks sweetly.

Allison snorts derisively and shakes her head, looking down as Klaus leans forward on his elbows. "Well, you're from the Commission," he points out, "and you've been trying to kill all of us for awhile now so I'm kinda curious as to why you suddenly want to 'help' Five do anything."

She flashes him a predatory grin filled with teeth and Vanya wants to push her away, to scream at her to keep away from her brother and her family. There's too much Harold Jenkins in the Handler for her to react any differently. To much manipulation and cruelty and emptiness lurking in her eyes. (Except Harold Jenkins had been all too human. She's not sure what the Handler is.) "He has certain information in his possession that my superiors require."

"That never stopped you before," Klaus reminds her.

She sighs. "We never wanted to kill any of you; that was a secondary objective. We simply wanted to prevent you and your brother from interfering in the natural progression of events. The apocalypse was scheduled to happen in this timeline; it was our job to make certain it did. If things had happened as they were supposed to that information would not have been necessary. However thanks to your interference the timeline has become destabilized to the point any further attempts to reset it could cause the entire thing to collapse. Given those circumstances, I'm here on behalf of my employers to offer you a deal."

"What kind of deal?" Diego asks, skepticism dripping off him like water. He's standing like a sentinel with his back to the door, guarded and on point.

"We're prepared to reverse his mental degradation, repair the neural pathways and restore his memories. In return, he is to give us the information in his head, and you _all _stay out of Commission affairs in the future. And the past."

"What information?" Luther demands but the woman just smiles, secrets playing around the edges of her mouth and it's probably a good thing for all of them that Vanya's had so much training managing her power and emotions lately.

"Last time he made a deal with you guys he came home with shrapnel in his stomach," Allison says heatedly and Diego nods in agreement.

"Yeah, almost bled to death," he adds, "doesn't exactly inspire faith."

"That wasn't the fault of the Commission or it's employees; he double-crossed us, tried to blow up the headquarters and injured himself in the process."

"Yeah but...why should we trust you?" Klaus asks and she spreads her hands in a 'why not' sort of gesture, flashing blood red nails like talons.

"Do you have a choice?" That smile again. Playful, the way a cat played with a mouse before breaking it's neck and devouring the corpse.

"Yeah I got a choice," says Diego, spinning a knife in his hand. "I could choose to drive this knife into your eye socket. How's that for a choice?"

"You could," she admits, seeming amused by the threat. "But if you kill me I'll simply be replaced. Just ask Five, he can tell you- oh wait, no he can't." She gives a tittering little laugh and Luther has to physically restrain Diego from attacking her. Maybe Luther's a better person than she is, because Vanya doesn't know if she would have stopped him.

She's toying with them, finding some twisted amusement in their pain and Vanya feels tears of frustration prickle the back of her eyes. That twittering laugh sticks in the back of her head, mocking, growing louder and all Vanya can see is heartache red lipstick and white teeth like fangs, and this...this _bitch_ who seems to be taking such delight in the whole affair, had she come here just to mock? To crow victory over them and Five and...

And Allison touches her arm while Klaus whispers "Whoa, easy V" and she realizes she's shaking, along with the rest of the room.

"Impressive," the Handler says admiringly.

"You should go," Luther tells her, casting a worried glance in her own direction.

"And my proposal?"

"Ben says you can take your proposal and shove it up your-"

"Klaus!" Luther warns, though Vanya thinks he's picked an odd time to start caring about Klaus' propriety (or lack thereof). He turns to the Handler again. "We have no reason to trust you."

She sighs, looking faintly perturbed but not a bit surprised. "I would have thought desperation would be a motivating factor. After all, your brother here is right," she gestures at Diego, "Five will live a very, _very_ long time without his mind, until he wastes away into nothing in fact. Are you sure you want to turn down the only chance he has? Or have you all reconciled yourselves to spending your inheritance on adult diapers and baby food for the next thirty years or so?"

Luther stares at her in quiet fury, jaw clenching then turns to each of them, gathering them by the eye, thoughts traded in silent glances. Vanya doesn't bother to be subtle, giving a furious shake of her head. No good can come of this. A consensus is reached and he looks back at the Handler. "I think if there was really anything you could do for him Five would have contacted you himself a long time ago."

She looks around at them but finds no allies. If nothing else, they were united in this. She stands, straightening her skirt. "Well, I suppose that's that."

"What about the information you need?" Vanya asks, barely trusting her voice. She's been too busy controlling herself to speak.

"There are other ways of getting it, this was just the most convenient. And don't we all like convenient solutions to our problems? Well, all except your family I suppose."

"Get out," Diego says, stepping aside and very pointedly revealing the door. They stand as one, staring her down; a united front at last. (Too late, of course, and at too heavy a cost. But that had always been the way of their damaged little family.)

She smiles again, still, like she has been this whole time, like she has the upper hand; calm and cold and damnably unconcerned, that treacle-sick sweetness oozing from her pores like poison. "So this is goodbye then." She glances at her watch, grabs the suitcase and disappears a moment later in a flash that reminds Vanya painfully of Five in his better days.

They all exhale as the tension bleeds out of the room. "So what the hell was that about?" Allison asks, but no one has any answers.

"Guess she just wanted to fuck with us," Diego says, but there's doubt shading his voice.

"She was lying," Vanya says and no one refutes it.

"Yeah," Diego agrees, sounding puzzled. "But what's weird about it is she didn't seem to care that we knew it."

"And if she wanted our help why be such a bitch about it?" Luther asks under his breath.

"Um, guys..."Klaus says slowly as he rises from the chair, some dawning realization making his voice unsteady. "If we were all here downstairs with her...who's watching Five?"

They share one look that courses through them like a Tesla coil and the next instant they're running, feet thundering on the stairs. Up, up, to the attic and it's impossible to know which of them actually reaches Five's room first but what Vanya can tell is that the door is open.

They never left Five's door open anymore.

She keeps running and almost slams into the stone wall of Luther's back. He's standing just inside the doorway, frozen in shock, hand gripping the door frame hard enough to crack the molding. "Oh, God..." he breathes. To one side is Grace, her body slumped carelessly against the wall. She's been nearly decapitated, head hanging to one side as exposed wires and circuitry sparked from the twisted metal stump of her neck.

Five isn't there.

Of course the Handler hadn't cared about the truth. Her words had been nothing more than toxic smoke; a shiny distraction.

"He's gone..." Allison whispers, trembling hand over her mouth.

Vanya looks around the empty room, her face stricken. Outside, the thunder rolls in as the house starts to creak and shake in response to the hurricane building inside her. "They took him."

* * *

_End part 1 of The Chronos Saga _

_Part 2, "Smoke and Ruin" is available and complete._


End file.
